Summary

Chris is the Co-founder, Administrator, Architect, Chief Editor and Shameless Hack who wrote and runs The Code Project. He's been programming since 1988 while pretending to be, in various guises, an astrophysicist, mathematician, physicist, hydrologist, geomorphologist, defence intelligence researcher and then, when all that got a bit rough on the nerves, a web developer. He is a Microsoft Visual C++ MVP both globally and for Canada locally.

His programming experience includes C/C++, C#, SQL, MFC, ASP, ASP.NET, and far, far too much FORTRAN. He has worked on PocketPCs, AIX mainframes, Sun workstations, and a CRAY YMP C90 behemoth but finds notebooks take up less desk space.

He dodges, he weaves, and he never gets enough sleep. He is kind to small animals.

Chris was born and bred in Australia but splits his time between Toronto and Melbourne, depending on the weather. For relaxation he is into road cycling, snowboarding, rock climbing, and storm chasing.

The CodeProject Advisors group is comprised of CodeProject members specifically chosen to advise the CodeProject on new products related to helping the community answer technical questions. This group participates in beta testing and feedback of products designed to help connect members with experts.

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The Code Project Daily Insider keeps you up to date with what is happening around the industry. From the continue saga of the Big Boys to Scott Guthrie's blog ramblings and Steve Jobs' latest, you will find it here.

In January 2005, David Cunningham and Chris Maunder created TheUltimateToolbox.com, a new group dedicated to the continued development, support and growth of Dundas Software’s award winning line of MFC, C++ and ActiveX control products.

Ultimate Grid for MFC, Ultimate Toolbox for MFC, and Ultimate TCP/IP have been stalwarts of C++/MFC development for a decade. Thousands of developers have used these products to speed their time to market, improve the quality of their finished products, and enhance the reliability and flexibility of their software.

Reputation

Privileges

Members need to achieve at least one of the given member levels in the given reputation
categories in order to perform a given action. For example, to store personal files in your
account area you will need to achieve Platinum level in either the Author or Authority category.
The "If Owner" column means that owners of an item automatically have the privilege. The
member types column lists member types who gain the privilege regardless of their reputation
level.

We noticed something interesting while digging through some data: the higher the reputation of a person, the less likely they are to ask a question. A high rep member is often someone who is technically competent, finds solutions where others can't, and is able to nut things out themselves in the face of substandard docs.

They still, however, have questions. We all do, and in doing a little soul-searching we realised that sometimes there's a hesitation in asking a question because you're scared to tarnish that reputation. We are all newbies at various stages, and the more we put ourselves in the position of being a newbie the more we learn.

If our biggest fear in asking a question is having people think we're dumb because we asked a dumb question, and if the purpose of Quick Answers is to provide a system to get questions answered, then why do we even need to show the name of the person posting the question? It doesn't add any value to the question itself. In fact it provides bias to the question, positive or negative, and that bias is unwarranted.

So we're not showing your name when you ask a question in Quick Answers. Ask away. The only time your question will have a problem is if it's not actually a question, if you've asked in a way that is unintelligible, or if you've dumped a homework assignment. Take the time to form an actual question and someone, somewhere will be able to answer it.

As a, supposedly, high-rep user, I don't care whether or not people think a question I'm asking is dumb. I suspect that most of the competent high-rep users feel the same. To be honest, it looks like you've taken isolated data and extrapolated an assumption out of it. Why not just ask us if we're put off because we think a question could be perceived as dumb or whether it's more likely that we have honed our searching skills?

From knowing you a bit I already assume that you, and many others, wouldn't care. You also have high searching and investigative skills. There's no doubt about that. My thoughts come from private conversations with developers and yes, there's definitely a low data set.

I'm not sure how many people are going to put up their hand and say "yep - I don't want my name shown front-and-centre because I think I'll look dumb".

There was another motivation to this which was to see the effect of removing the person from the question and letting the question be treated on its own merits. I have worried for a long time that a name or a reputation level immediately biases those answering (or flagging) questions.

I'm ready to be wrong about this but thought it was worth an experiment. If it's out-and-out a bad idea then I'll flip the switch back on.

There was another motivation to this which was to see the effect of removing the person from the question and letting the question be treated on its own merits. I have worried for a long time that a name or a reputation level immediately biases those answering (or flagging) questions.

I actually assumed that was the real reason, and while I find it commendable and have absolutely nothing against it, I believe you need to find a way to take care of the drawbacks first. The handling of spam and abuse being the major ones as far as I'm concerned.

Off Topic:
Do the menus work for you on iPad? I have to go to the 'All Boards' page and navigate that huge list to get to the desired forum on Safari. I use to be able to hold down on the menu and it would open... but it stopped working a few weeks back.

Sorry for not responding until now, but I experienced another bug (which I will report separately), so I had to wait until I had the computer and the iPad side by side so I could find the message, test and respond to it.

If you could read the internal employee message boards/mailing lists at one of the largest software companies... you'd see the same thing... the senior engineers hardly ever ask any questions. I think it's simply because they are the most experience problem solvers. Almost any problem can be solved with a debugger and 1 experenced engineer.

It's an interesting idea but I highly doubt you'll see any change in the numbers.

Are you working with some other dataset I don't know about? Are you seeing high rep members creating sockpuppets to ask questions?

Hmmm, you have a point, but I suspect that it does more harm than good. Ya gotta try though.

Primarily I agree. I ask very few questions and when I do have something I might ask about, I try to do as much as I can to diagnose the issue and give a full accurate description -- often with the result that I solve it myself. And maybe write a Tip.

But when there is something that still eludes me, I have no issue with asking -- I so want those other two platinums!

Maybe give members above a certain reputation the option to obfuscate their name?
Maybe similar to the option I have of posting as myself or as my Group?

That is really a very personal Statement: In case a member thinks he is to good/high rep to ask a question un-anonymously (how this would really called this un-anonymously?), he does not deserve an answer!

As a voice of low rep members I still would like, that questions can't be downvoted.

"if they asked a dumb question", I think that is exactly the same like "to be too good, to fail". But nevertheless a good Experiment, looking Forward for the results (if the results would ever be published).

Imagine, a question is not clear enough and some one is posting a comment to bring lights to the question. High-rep member reply the question and His comment is visible. In this case everyone knows who's an author of the question.

Personally, i don't afraid to ask a question, because nobody's perfect and does not have enough experience in everything he starts to work with.

Quote:

Who asks not stray

[EDIT]
On the other hand, how can i report a user who's posting spamm on QA forum?